I have been diagnosed with OCD. Obsessive~Compulsive~Disorder. I have had it for many years. It challenges me every single day. For me there’s a lot of counting. I don’t know why or what actually causes it but I count things,… everything,… “How many steps it takes me” is the big one. But I also count seconds or things. My head swims with numbers. It can get quite annoying. I have tried to stop but so far not a lot has helped.

OCD also used to make me obsessed with cleaning and germs and everything neat and organized. You would think this would be a good thing wouldn’t you. Your house would always be clean and tidy. But for OCD sufferers it was not. I would be so exhausted but would stay up all night sometimes cleaning. Even if it looked done,… It never was for me. I spent hours upon hours scrubbing and sterilizing things. After grocery shopping I would have to wipe down a lot of the stuff I bought. Canned goods especially. I couldn’t even open one without washing the top. It takes over your life this obsession. Lucky for me my new OCD medication has helped me with this one tremendously. I do find it curious that the medication could help me so well with one OCD sympton but not on any of the others. (??)

But one of the hardest things I deal with is the obsession over things. If I start to do something,… I get tunnel vision. I put everything I’ve got into it. This sounds so easy when said out loud. “Well, if you can see you are obsessed over something,…why don’t you just stop?” But the problem is ~ I don’t see it. It becomes all consuming to me and I lose myself in it.

I have had many obsessions over my adult life. But I think the most problematic one is the addiction. After all isn’t an addiction actually an obsession?

And in my blog today I am going to come clean about my present obsession. Marijuana. I am so embarrassed and humiliated to have to admit to myself that after 2 years of smoking weed I have come to realize that I am obsessed,…addicted,… absolutely need to have on a daily basis. And now,…it needs to stop.

It started out simply enough a few years back when a girl in one of my support groups mentioned that the only thing that helps her tremors is pot. And I,.. like a complete naive moron thought “yeah, that’s a great idea,… I think I’m going to try it too ~ just a tiny bit before I go to bed every night” No big deal right? It’s just pot. It’s not like when I was addicted to pills. When I was on pills I was on so many that I was strung out catatonic at times. I didn’t feel anxiety but then again i didn’t feel anything else either. I was a numbed out drug addict.

So where were all my bells in my head that should have been going off? Nope, no bells. Nothing at all. I honestly felt it was harmless. And best of all,… my tremors would really calm down. So by telling myself that it was ‘medicinal’ made it much easier to continue. Lie to yourself,… Lie to everyone around you,… that’s what addicts do,… they lie.

I started out by using a vaporizer instead of smoking it. I live in a non-smoking building. When you use a vaporizer instead of a pipe or bong it doesn’t smell. After all, I love where I live now and really don’t want to get evicted for smoking.

But after about 6 months or so it stopped working when I vaporized. So what do I do? I switch over to using a pipe. And 6 months after that I switched to using a bong. In short,… my addiction was growing. What used to get me feeling great now didn’t work at all. My tolerance for the weed had grown so much that now I needed more and more. And instead of smoking it only before bed, I have grown to smoking it 5 or 6 times a night.

And I’m your typical addict. I can convince myself that I’m not doing anything wrong. But I knew,… I knew what I was doing was getting worse and worse. Smoking from a pipe or bong makes a very distinctive and strong odour that you can’t mask. But being in the middle of an addiction means that I could easily convince myself that as long as I put a blanket under my front door and then keep the door shut in the room I was smoking in that no one would smell it. Why no one had smelled it is beyond me. Maybe they have and are just wondering what to do about it. And that leaves me really paranoid. (pot does cause paranoia)

When I first started, I was only doing it once a night and it had to be really late so hopefully everyone was sleeping and no one would smell it. But over time, as the urge and need for it strengthened I started taking a lot of chances. I would smoke earlier and earlier each night. Which means I was smoking it 5, 6 or 7 times in an evening. And once I got high, I would feel paranoid that someone was going to be banging on my door.

It wasn’t until last week when I was sitting on my bed doing this nightly ritual of filling my bong and smoking it, when I stopped. I looked around my bedroom. It was a mess. And the night table looked like a drug den. It was the first time I had really been shocked into seeing the reality of smoking marijuana. It’s a filthy habit. The black tar from the weed after its been smoked is disgusting. It sticks to everything. The pipe, the bong, your skin. It really is a gross thing to do. Unfortunately, when your addicted, the mess doesn’t matter.

But,… I AM AN ADDICT ~ I always have been and I probably always will be. I just change my “drug of choice” every time I free myself from a past addiction. In actuality I just switched from pills to weed.

I am so embarrassed and humiliated because of this. People have gone out of their way to help me over the past few years. Lying to them makes me feel so ashamed. I know I have let a lot of people down.

So here is where things stand,… I had the last of my pot last night. But for the first time, I am not going to get more. Once I’m out, smoking weed is over. But this terrifies me. I remember what it felt like coming off of pills. The withdrawal, the feeling horrible,… Feeling like your not comfortable in your own skin. I’m not sure I can do that again. But I have to try. I have daughters and my brother and sister-in-law. They have worked very hard with me over the past 3 years since I moved here.

So I don’t know what the next few weeks will be like for me. Withdrawals or no withdrawals,… I’m more concerned about dealing with the strong urge to smoke than I am on how I will be feeling physically. Time will tell.